A new review of Rain Crow straight from the pages of the most excellent Razorcake, the only official non-profit DIY punk rock fanzine in the USA. If you like the punk rock, why don’t you have a subscription, huh. (Note: Razorcake is a PRINT magazine, with actual pages that you turn with your fingers. The reviews are also posted on their website.)
(Thanks, Todd!)
Posted by sean on September 24, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/09/24/another-review-of-rain-crow/
Excerpt from Book of Thoughts, an erasure text.
Read another excerpt from Book of Thoughts at Ink Sweat & Tears.
Posted by sean on September 7, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/09/07/excerpt-from-book-of-thoughts/
Rain Crow received its first review last week at DJ Frederick’s excellent site One Minute Cassette Reviews. His description of me writing ‘like an alchemist’ is a good reminder that… I must return soon to my laboratory.
If you have some time, I recommend poking around among DJ Frederick’s many other projects, including his various radio shows (my favorite so far is his folk show Night Train to Mundo Fine), links to all of which can be found at his Cottage Industry site.
Posted by sean on July 30, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/07/30/first-review-of-rain-crow/
Beyond this black forest
I stoke this fire of my soul
flickering with the breathing of the cities
and the blackbirds of fear.
With bare hands I kill these flames
that climb the air into my brain
and shiver in my name.
My heart drifts as a cloud
over the rooftops
along the rivers,
until I return, a later rain
deep in the fall.
—Thomas Bernhard, In Hora Mortis / Under the Iron of the Moon (p. 103)
Posted by sean on July 17, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/07/17/thomas-bernhard-poem/
see how the living tend the dead
on a wedge of grass sewn between
the quarry and the chemical plant.
the quarry detonates explosives
once per day, a violent event
often not unlike an earthquake.
the plant contains enough
toxic materials (296,000 lbs)
that it must tell the feds
how many people an explosion
would affect. is it just me or…
as if they know, vultures gather
though of course there is nothing
here for them at this dull moment.
the dead are buried and the living
yet tend them. while in the grass
crouch downy killdeer young
whose alarms sound at my approach.
busy with its own survival
a great crested flycatcher
hawks insects on the edge
of this green death field.
and the gravel path yields
a skittering cicada as it
unwinds the last coils
of its own brief life.
Posted by sean on June 27, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/06/27/fragment-21/
small things changed, tiny even,
we marvel at how they alter us.
while enormous things ever looming
leave us to cower in a corner.
tuning the orchestra of change
is a task designed for certain
of us who thrive on constant flux.
is flux necessary for vitality…
i do not know the answer to this.
one change i like is seasonal change
but nature makes that change itself
i. am. not. involved. at. all.
it is change swirling around me
dipping inside me to the dark river
along which we all share a shoreline.
protracted change is excruciating.
please just get it over with!
don’t drag us over these hot coals
any longer than is needed.
but perhaps the worst is craving
change but feeling unable or unwilling
to rise above the fear to effect it.
this change paralysis grips us tight
as we suffer for want of its release.
(sometimes i stare forlorn
at a thing i want changed
for days, weeks, months.
change, change, change, do it!
please don’t make me be the one.)
and i wonder how it would feel
to suddenly change everything
all at once, an eruption of change!
exploding habits, shattering routines,
would we all just crack down the middle
or would everything suddenly become clear.
Posted by sean on June 4, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/06/04/fragment-19/
Printing in progress!
After a five-year hiatus, I made a new zine. This manuscript was first conceived for a chapbook contest that I did not win. Rather than continue to run hither and thither for possibly years on end with Rain Crow clenched in my clackity-clack claws, prostrating myself before the micro-press literati, I decided to publish it myself, just like I have always done. Regarding the content, it has all appeared here in this space in one form or another. So, it’s possible regular readers may not be interested. However, in its defense, it does feature illustrations and a handmade cover. Reading words in print has also been proven to cause less eye strain than reading them on screen, according to an unscientific study conducted by a known “damned bastard of a cloud-monger” (Baudelaire’s words, not mine).
Orders can be placed through PayPal (from this page) or by old-fashioned cash through the post (if anyone does that anymore). I am also open to TRADES. While I hope to recoup at least some of my printing and postage costs, I am definitely interested if you have something to barter in exchange. This can be artwork, writing, music, or any other kind of creative eruption. It does not have to be a zine. It can be some hand-scrawled poems you wrote while waiting for the bus. In fact, that might even be better than a zine.
If you want to send a trade (or cash), send me a message so we can trade addresses.
Order by PayPal here. If you have a color preference from the photo above, please make note of it in the order form. All colors are limited and others are yet to be printed, so there are no guarantees, but I’ll do my best.
SOLD OUT! Maybe check Quimby’s.
Posted by sean on May 31, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/05/31/rain-crow-has-landed/
confabulate as a way to genuflect,
the past only what it may have been,
a shimmer in dry corners of our eyes.
or remember as a way to draw maps
the passed only what just went by
a glimmer of our truths, not lies.
(in between i can’t help thinking
what if i were smaller, or larger
what if i were colossus of rhodes
looming over a very narrow spot.)
but don’t bother trying to explain
these things that don’t make sense.
read them quiet to yourself and laugh,
like the entire world missed the joke.
besides, there is relief in knowing
most everything except your own story
has been shouted out into the world
and now it is the how you tell it
that can light up the night skies.
(and if i could write this backwards
i would. and if i could write myself
to the top of an oak tree i would.
but there are some days when i can
barely write myself out the door.)
robert walser wrote “you have a future
only when you have no present,
and when you have a present,
you forget to even think about the future.”
(his preference: the latter)
reminded of walser’s words today,
i wondered what we eagerly expect
from all this panicky planning
shoved down our throats as the present
folds under into fodder for futures
perhaps better left forgotten,
dissolved in a day’s dreamy details.
Posted by sean on May 30, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/05/30/fragment-18/
What did you see today, other, asked the one.
I saw a tiny warbler bathing in the bird bath.
Oh! And how was that.
It pleased me in a way that I don’t often feel.
How, how did it please you, other.
Hmm. I don’t know if I can articulate it. It filled me with wonder.
That sounds good.
Yes, it was good, one.
Tell me, other, why are you not often filled with wonder.
I’m not sure. Lack of the right stimulation, I guess.
What is the right stimulation, other. Is it like how so many of our dreams go to childhood, where everything was a wonder, and our minds were not yet full of life-junk or maybe they were but it had not yet come crashing in on us.
Yes! It is like that. I think of roads, roads I traveled on as a kid, staring out from the backseat, and I looked off the road to what was beyond and I imagined myself there so many, many times that it was as if I really had been there, in the beyond, even if I never really had. And those are the roads I travel in my dreams, over and over.
The roads of wonder.
Yes.
Other, do you think there are still roads of wonder out there, for us to travel on, now…
I hope so, one. I really do. It is that hope that keeps us going, right.
Yes, that and the absurd, other…do not forget the absurd!
O right. Yes, we do take much delight in the absurd, don’t we, one.
It’s all around us. Were we not to take delight in it, it would surely drown us, other.
Plasticity of the mind. We must focus on the still-plastic parts of our minds, one!
Anteaters.
Yes, indeed. How long have you been saving that one up.
At least since this morning. Goodnight, other.
Goodnight, one.
Posted by sean on May 16, 2013
https://sd-stewart.com/2013/05/16/the-one-and-the-other-discuss-wonder/
s. d. stewart 